Eating your insides out: cultural, physical and institutionally-structured violence in the prison place

This article explores three forms of violence in the prison place: physical, cultural and structural. The article starts with an overview of the nature and extent of 'everyday mundane' physical violence in the prison place, drawing upon but also problematising official data. The article then looks at 'cultures of violence' and the role that they perform in legitimating everyday prison violence. Finally, and most importantly, the article then explores the problem of 'structural violence' (Galtung, 1969) in the prison place and the manner in which it underscores both physical and cultural violence. Making connections with the 'deprivation' thesis in the sociology of imprisonment literature and detailing harmful outcomes and consequences of structural violence, such as the generation of suicidal ideation and self inflicted deaths in prison, the article concludes by arguing that prisons are inevitably places of violence, iatrogenic harm, injury and death. Any successful anti-violence and harm reduction strategies must therefore be directly tied to broader radical reductionist and penal abolitionist agendas

Punishing the Other

Book Revie

Reflections on the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control

All academic writing is collaborative. It is collaborative in the sense that when we write academic discourse we inevitably engage with the ideas of others who have previously written on our topic areas; that when we publish our work it has often - and largely invisibly - benefitted from formal and informal reviews, suggestions and helpful comments from colleagues and other peers; and often, what we write can be an indirect and serendipitous result of being part of an intellectual milieu where we are able to freely discuss issues and debates collectively and learn through a dialogue with like-minded people. Without such a collaborative ethos academic discourse would be much the poorer and advances in scholarship much harder to come by. Those forums that facilitate collaboration should be treasured and their crucial contribution acknowledged. The European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control [European Group] is one such intellectual milieu in which the ideas explored in critical criminologies in the last five decades have germinated and developed

Speaking the language of state violence: an abolitionist perspective

This article explores the 'violence of incarceration' from an abolitionist perspective. The article starts by exploring the meaning of 'state violence' and connecting this with broader debates around 'structural violence'. It then goes on to overview the abolitionist approach, first by differentiating it from liberal penological understandings of violence in prison and then by naming the 'violence of incarceration' as form of state violence. The article concludes with a call for the mobilisation of social justice activists against all manifestations of state violence

Hearing the voice of the estranged Other: Abolitionist ethical hermeneutics

This article explores the ethico-political justifications for hearing the prisoner voice from an abolitionist perspective. It starts by locating the interpretation of prisoner narratives within the specific moral context of the prison place and moves on to consider whether discourse ethics can effectively safeguard the voice of the prisoner. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of discourse ethics and their application in liberal penologies, the discussion turns to the alternative critical theory of liberation ethics. Enrique Dussel (2013) has argued that we have an ethico-political responsibility to not only ensure material conditions are in place to facilitate voice but also to adopt the worldview of the powerless. Whilst such a position cannot be uncritically accepted, an argument is made for the selective adoption of the prisoner voice which is consistent with an abolitionist normative framework promoting emancipatory politics and praxis. The article draws to a conclusion by considering normative principles that can guide abolitionists when the prisoner voice is silenced

Against criminal injustice, for social justice: reflections and possibilities

At the time of writing, April 2015, the general election in the United Kingdom is only a few weeks away. We are in urgent need of plausible and radical alternatives to the neoliberal rhetoric of mainstream political parties and the formulation of new social policies that can rewrite the old story of the’ rich getting richer and the poor getting prison’. We need to start with an honest appraisal of the limitations of contemporary political and penal governance in our times (in the UK and across many other countries in Europe) and formulate a new vision promoting social solidarity, human emancipation and genuine equality for all. In this paper I wish to make some progress in this direction by discussing the problem of ‘criminal injustice’ – that is the injustices and inequalities exacerbated by the criminal process – and the urgent need to tackle such ‘criminal injustice’ through radical interventions grounded in the principles of social justice. Let me start though by thinking about the nature and extent of ‘criminal injustice’

Weber, L, Fisher, E. and Marmo, M. Crime. Justice and Human rights

Book Revie

Reimagining Citizenship: Towards non-penal real utopias

As has long been recognised, the social distance created between offenders and a mythical law-abiding majority helps to fuel punitive practices and hinders any attempts to seriously reform the penal landscape (e.g. Christie, 2000). The commonplace treatment of the majority of offenders as non-citizens precludes meaningful dialogue and debate with ‘the citizenry’. As has been evident in recent years, debate about penal issues amongst those who are seen to be worthy of citizenship has often been reduced to base populism (Pratt, 2007). This presentation will seek to argue that penal reform can only result from adopting a genuinely inclusive, pluralist notion of citizenship (Kabeer, 2005) which is capable of incorporating all those affected by both state-defined crimes and various forms of social harm, whether they are regarded as victims or offenders. Even though we favour a Marshallian rights-based approach to citizenship, we argue that the notion of responsibility is also paramount. Yet, it needs to be understood in the widest possible sense to focus not only on the responsibilities of offenders as citizens but also those of individuals, states and communities to play a meaningful role in tackling harmful behaviour at source. This of course entails shifting the focus beyond harmful actions and those responsible for them to analyse broader agendas for political reform. Here we draw upon the insights of the Argentinian Liberation Philosopher Enrique Dussel (2010; 2013). Just as the debate on penal policy needs to go beyond crime, as it is commonly defined, the solutions proposed for the resolution of harmful behaviour need to go beyond the penal, going further than simply modifying the penal landscape to develop genuine non-penal real utopias

Reawakening Our Radical Imaginations: Thinking realistically about utopias, dystopias and the non-penal

In this introduction we consider the relationship between the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control [European Group] and the promotion of non-penal real utopias. The article begins by considering the historical connections between the New Left, utopian ideas, abolitionism and critical criminology, highlighting the role played by the European Group in the development of utopian thought. It then considers the utopian imagination in critical criminology, paying particular attention to Penal Abolitionism and Zemiology as utopia. It briefly analyses the crisis of utopia undergone by critical criminology in the 1980s before moving on to discuss the recent reawakening of the utopian criminological imagination and discussing the normative framework on which it should be based. Finally, it highlights the importance of developing of an emancipatory politics and praxis